A mixed bag of babies and a blog

February 2011

02/25/2011

No, I did not give birth to a labrador retriever. Aja had her 18 month appointment today and despite a recent sickness that sucked some of the tund out of her rotund, she weighs in at a hefty 18.9 pounds. Okay, she might not be hefty, but considering how far she's come, she's ginormous.

We're so pleased, we wrapped her up like a present.

Actually, the girls found an old roll of christmas wrapping paper and decided to unroll it all over the bedroom and hallway. Jocelyn then started gathering her toys and placing them in the middle of the paper. I asked what she was doing and she said, "Mommy, I wrap present for Barack Obama."

02/23/2011

There’s that old familiar adage, “I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.” The other morning I experienced this, with a twist: I woke up on Jocelyn’s side of the bed.

She woke up pissed off. Not just a little grumpy or annoyed that I interrupted her moment of snoring glory. No, she was mad at the world. She twisted her head and kicked her feet, scrunched her eyes together and then opened them so wide you would have thought that she swallowed a steak knife. Sideways. I tried to ignore her, but it’s difficult to ignore a shrieking elephant when you have to feed it. As much as she did not want to be near me, she just couldn’t help herself. And so I tried to close my mind off. Screaming or not, she needed to be changed. I breathed deep.

Call it ignorant bliss.

It worked. I managed to get the girls to daycare without any mental or physical scars. When I returned in the early evening, Jocelyn had completed her circus act, removed her steak knife, and ran through her friends (a little push here, a little shove there) to hug me. She then waved to her teacher, yelling, “bye bye school today.”

I thought that all of the dramatics in our house had run its course, but then Aja started teething again. There are at least two molars, possibly three, that are making themselves known. The hell that we live in when the teeth scrape their way through the gums only happens at night. It is after three hours of trying to get her to go to sleep, when the rocking and shushing and babying have all failed, that I wish we lived in another time—a time when whiskey on the gums was a treat for eating your peas.

02/14/2011

It's Valentine's Day. What better time to talk about virgins. Afterall, I am a virgin. Now, I have obviously had sex enough times to birth two children, so I'm not talking about the time I spend in between the sheets. I'm talking about harvesting. Gardening. Getting your hoe down.

Recently we realized that our girls have finally grown enough to hang out on our small patio. No one will fall over, and only one of them will eat dirt. So we thought that it was about time to take another look at our empty pots and make something happen.

Enter, the Virgin Harvest, a lovely little get together (of sorts), organized by dig this chick, one of my new favorite blogs/bloggers. My gardening prowess would probably have stayed hidden, but this organized chaos has helped to bring it all to the surface (or at least to the blog).

Okay, so I didn't actually do any of the planting. I was just the photographer. But this is a family journey, and we are going to try our damndest to keep these flowers and arugula alive.

In other virgin news, I cut Jocelyn's hair for the first time. A mullet had managed to find it's way on the back of her head, and I had to do my motherly duty and get rid of it. I've been wanting to have her wear her hair down for the first time in I don't know how long. Let's just say that this white mama has come a long way from the early days.

02/10/2011

I never thought that I would get barfed on at the eye doctor. I could make this post more interesting by saying that it was the eye doctor that let a half digested carrot muffin find a new home on my chest, but that would be a lie.

The ugly sickly phlegmy germs have taken root in Aja's chest and they wanted to make themselves known. Aja spurred them on by refusing to look at the doctor while he examined her, by forcing us to hold her still so he could look in her eyes, and by showing her disgust by coughing crying coughing crying.

Cue the barf.

Or I should say, the spit up. At first, it was just a little spit up that I caught in my hand. The nurse brought me a tissue, and I held Aja to my chest, saying, "It's okay sweetheart. It's ok--" [holy shit you just threw up on me].

The nurse brought me a roll of paper towels and a garbage pail.

Once the phlegm was out, she was fine. I'm not sure she'll stay fine once she realizes that I'm going to strap a pair of glasses to her face. The doctor made it official: she will have four eyes. And not the fashionable kind. He was rather specific. "Just don't get her wire frames. You really need ones that are durable."

In other words, "Don't expect your baby to be a Gap model with a pair of fancy wire-rimmed glasses."

When I tell Aja about the functional glasses she will need to wear, she barfs again.

Maybe I should say add a third thing. My husband is golfing this morning, which means I can enjoy the marathon, sip my coffee, and the girls can spread their blocks and toys all over the floor to their hearts content.

If you're new here, welcome! Visit my first post and find out how this all started. An addendum to that is Aja's birth story. Some of my favorite posts are here, here, and here. But peek here and there, all around, and find your own favorite.